Jaded about elections

A story, told by an idiot, with much sound and fury, trying to explain the absence of the youth vote, signifying nothing:

I remember it like it was yesterday. Let's set the stage:

Date: November 7th, 2000
Time: 9:00pm
Place: Fraternity House

Election year. It is that quadrennial event in which people go to the polls to pull the pole which selects the politician which you want to lead your country for four years. It is the event of high hopes and dashed dreams. An event full of ideals and values. One of the events which should be sacred to every single American in this country.

This election year was my first to vote. It was also my second year in college. I had driven all the way back to my hometown to vote because this was the year where they passed a bill saying that you could not vote in your college town, but had to vote in your original district. I missed the absentee deadline, so I drove home to make sure I was able to vote.

Several of my fellow fraternity brothers had done similar things, or filed for absentee ballots. For many of us, it was our first chance to vote, our first chance to say who we wanted for leader, our first chance to say "we want this man to be our president."

Living in Michigan, one knows that the Democrat/liberal candidate would easily win. Gore hadn't said much that was ideal to me, but I know I hated GWBush and his politics. I had voted for Nader and the Green Party for the purpose of trying to get him to push to the 2% needed for federal funding. Not that he had a snowball's chance in hell of winning, but I felt the democrats and republicans were sort of like polarized magnets which were facing each other on a high friction surface. Slowly and painfully, they were coming together to become virtually the same magnet.

The house was pretty evenly split, but very cordial about it. Only a couple of the brothers were truly political (excluding yours truly...aerospace homework and parties = political lightweight). They were communication or poli-sci majors.

On election night, the house had gathered in the main room to watch the news progress throughout the evening. Eagerly anticipating the results, we were on the edge of our seats for most of the evening. Edge of our seats may be the wrong term...more like edge of our drink. We were drinking to celebrate and...well, it was a fraternity, we used any excuse to get together and drink, though I suspected this was a good one.

The results started coming in, rather silly at first. As usual. Most of us had pledged that we would stay up and watch until the concession speeches were given and the whole evening was over. As the results came in, Florida stayed stubbornly indecisive. Soon, a news channel had declared Florida for Gore. A general feeling of relief and finality had overcome us. The concession speech would surely come soon, right?

Time passed...

and passed...

and passed...

I decided to start doing my homework, which I had vowed to neglect until the speeches were done, (and I was slightly tipsy). Bush had not come out to give his speech. Why not? We were all really frustrated at this point. We wanted to get on with our lives knowing who would be our next President.

Then, Fox News decided that Florida really voted for Bush. Then, it was really close, and no concession speech would be given that night.

Days passed.

Weeks passed.

Stories of voter fraud started emerging from the newspapers. Recalls kept occurring. Ballots were thrown out. Stories of difficult ballots came out. The popular vote had clearly gone to Gore. But, who what would seperate the winner from the loser? And, finally, the Supreme Court decided that Gore had lost and Bush had won.

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Year: 2004

Four years later. Billions of dollars in debt. At war with a country which did not attack us. We were poised to renew our bid for President. Would we be able to choose who we wanted this time around?

October 2003 had the beginning of the first section of the year's rally "A.B.B." Anybody but Bush.

The democrats were a joke when they first started their bid in October 2003. Who were these jokers, and couldn't we have a remix of them? Who really wanted to vote for any of these assholes? Why were we stuck with these decisions? Were we stuck with these choices because of ABB? Nobody chose to answer these questions, but Kerry was elected in the primaries, to the chagrin of most democrats. ABB became ABBAK, Anybody But Bush And Kerry.

Early in 2004, bombings of Spain their election week laid claims that the terrorists were manipulating elections abroad. Newspapers and politicians clinged to this concept of who people would vote for were dictated by fear. This wasn't too far off.

Cynical speculations that Usama Bin Laden would be "captured" sometime in late October, in time for re-election. Or, he would at least pop up somehow. This turned out to be true.

MTV's perpetual use as a pop culture brainwashing machine came to restart their "Choose or lose" which was later molded into "choose or die." Choose or Lose was deemed a success for asking what type of underwear Clinton wears, circa Beavis and Butthead era.

Actors and actresses came out, as usual, and demanded that people should vote...and vote for Kerry, the new Democratic running mate.

Besides the volume and rancor of the punditry, everything seemed to be moving fairly normally: except for ABB.

THEN THINGS STARTED TO GET MEAN

Besides the usual trash-talking and mud-slinging which pervades every election, we had the new stories of potential voter fraud, and more groups of wannabe registrars.

There were electronic voting boothes which had no paper trails, thus allowing data to be manipulated (there is a reason the IRS demands you keep reciepts for 7 years).

The groups were caught with various false registrations.

Ohio throws out registrations because they were not on thick enough paper

Registrations were missing through the mail.

Voter fraud starts appearing in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida...And these started happening in September.

By late October, many people were tired of the endurance which it takes to keep up with the virtual onslaught of politics which happens with election year.

Neither side was innocent. Neither side believed that the elections were sacred. They both took the events of last year's elections as a launch pad for further manipulation.

False news stories appear on television, to be proven false on internet blogs. False news stories then happen on blogs.

Finally, the voice of reason appears: from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. South Park's 8th season premiere airs the Wednesday before election day. In it, they criticize PETA and plead with people vote. They tell people to vote, but agree with the potential non-voters that the candidates are a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Literally. This had overtones of The Simpson's 1996 season (interestingly their 8th season) opener "Treehouse of Horror VII" which featured Bill Clinton and Al Gore as aliens, whom you were doomed to vote for. The issue with South Park was it ended with your vote didn't matter anyways.

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Why have the youth decided not to vote. Besides the respectable people who don't vote because they don't know anything about politics, we have a jaded society. Elections have become a sham. A way to defraud the American public. A joke. With armys of lawyers deployed to various states, we have an extremely large way for the youth to be jaded.

People between the ages of 22 and 25 have experienced two elections in a row which have practically seemed as if they weren't decided by votes but by flaws and laws. With al of the predictions from the liberal left coming true, why shouldn't we believe that there would be voter fraud? Then, those rumors came true when there was a computer election booth which created 3000 Republican votes.

Is it any wonder why we have so many youth jaded from voting?